Thank you. I’m just anxious to dive in on this topic of locums and resident physicians, but that’s not my question today. My question is to the Minister of Health and Social Services.

We have excessive and rising costs in delivering health and social services programs to the residents of the Northwest Territories. Over a number of years I have raised this concern: If I’m a resident of Hay River and I’m having surgery at Stanton Territorial Hospital on Monday morning, I must have the pre-op work done on Friday, which means that someone has to come here on Friday, get their pre-op lab work done and then go for their surgery on Monday morning. This has been a long-standing problem and issue. If the person comes over here at their own expense because they’re self-employed or don’t have insurance coverage, they have a choice. They can either fly up Friday and fly home and incur that cost, or they can come up and stay for the weekend and incur that cost, because we all know there’s no place to stay for patients from other communities when they come to Yellowknife, unless you can get into the Vital Abel Boarding Home, and that is limited.

So here’s my question: We have a lab in our hospital in Hay River that does blood work for everything else. Why can’t we streamline the system so that when someone needs blood work and lab work done to ensure they’re ready for surgery on Monday, why can’t that be done in Hay River and those results communicated somehow to Stanton so that we can avoid these problems? It’s ongoing, it continues, it costs us money, it costs our patients money. What are we going to do about it? Thank you.